The Cob Builders Handbook: You Can Hand-Sculpt Your Own Home, 3rd Edition

Cob (an old English word for lump) is old-fashioned concrete, made out of a mixture of clay, sand, and straw. Becky Bee's manual is a friendly guide to making your own earth structure, with chapters on design, foundations, floors, windows and doors, finishes, and of course, making glorious cob. "I believe that building with cob is a way to recreate community and experience the joy of working together while taking back the right to build our own homes and look after our Mother Earth." She loves doing something that makes sense in a world where lots of things don't. One-third of the world's population lives in homes made of unbaked earth. Fifty thousand cob buildings are still in use in England today, most of them built in the 18th and 19th centuries. This is not a fad or craze, but rather a building technique that has stood the test of time. It is also, unfortunately, one of the many environmentally friendly techniques that was nearly lost in this century when we have been awash in a culture where every challenge is solved by the use of gallons of fossil fuel